The Height of Land by Duncan Campbell Scott

Here is the height of land:The watershed on either handGoes down to Hudson BayOr Lake Superior;The stars are up, and far awayThe wind sounds in the wood, wearierThan the long Ojibwa cadenceIn which Potàn the WiseDeclares the ills of lifeAnd Chees-que-ne-ne makes a mournful soundOf acquiescence. The fires burn lowWith just sufficient glowTo light the flakes of ash that playAt being moths, and flutter awayTo fall in the dark and die as ashes:Here there is peace in the lofty air,And Something comes by flashesDeeper than peace: --The spruces have retired a little spaceAnd left a field of sky in violet shadowWith stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.

Now the Indian guides are dead asleep;There is no sound unless the soul can hearThe gathering of the waters in their sources.We have come up through the spreading lakesFrom level to level, --Pitching our tents sometimes over a revelOf roses that nodded all night,Dreaming within our dreams, To wake at dawn and find that they were capturedWith no dew on their leaves;Sometimes mid sheavesOf bracken and dwarf-cornel, and againOn a wide blueberry plain Brushed with the shimmer of a bluebird's wing;A rocky islet followedWith one lone poplar and a single nestOf white-throat-sparrows that took no restBut sang in dreams or woke to sing, --To the last portage and the height of land --:Upon one handThe lonely north enlaced with lakes and streams,And the enormous targe of Hudson Bay,Glimmering all nightIn the cold arctic light;On the other handThe crowded southern landWith all the welter of the lives of men.But here is peace, and againThat Something comes by flashesDeeper than peace, -- a spellGolden and inappellableThat gives the inarticulate partOf our strange being one moment of releaseThat seems more native than the touch of time,And we must answer in chime;Though yet no man may tellThe secret of that spellGolden and inappellable.

Now are there sounds walking in the wood,And all the spruces shiver and tremble,And the stars move a little in their courses.The ancient disturber of solitudeBreathes a pervasive sigh,And the soul seems to hearThe gathering of the waters at their sources;Then quiet ensues and pure starlight and dark;The region-spirit murmurs in meditation,The heart replies in exaltationAnd echoes faintly like an inland shellGhost tremors of the spell;Thought reawakens and is linked againWith all the welter of the lives of men.Here on the uplands where the air is clearWe think of life as of a stormy scene, --Of tempest, of revolt and desperate shock;And here, where we can think, on the brights uplandsWhere the air is clear, we deeply brood on lifeUntil the tempest parts, and it appearsAs simple as to the shepherd seems his flock:A Something to be guided by ideals --That in themselves are simple and serene --Of noble deed to foster noble thought,And noble thought to image noble deed,Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate,Making life lovelier, till we come to doubtWhether the perfect beauty that escapesIs beauty of deed or thought or some high thingMingled of both, a greater boon than either:Thus we have seen in the retreating tempestThe victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain,And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow.

The ancient disturber of solitudeStirs his ancestral potion in the gloom,And the dark woodIs stifled with the pungent fumeOf charred earth burnt to the boneThat takes the place of air.Then sudden I remember when and where, --The last weird lakelet foul with weedy growthsAnd slimy viscid things the spirit loathes,Skin of vile water over viler mudWhere the paddle stirred unutterable stenches,And the canoes seemed heavy with fear,Not to be urged toward the fatal shoreWhere a bush fire, smouldering, with sudden roarLeaped on a cedar and smothered it with lightAnd terror. It had left the portage-heightA tangle of slanted spruces burned to the roots,Covered still with patches of bright fireSmoking with incense of the fragment resinThat even then began to thin and lessenInto the gloom and glimmer of ruin.'Tis overpast. How strange the stars have grown;The presage of extinction glows on their crestsAnd they are beautied with impermanence;They shall be after the race of menAnd mourn for them who snared their fiery pinions,Entangled in the meshes of bright words.

A lemming stirs the fern and in the mossesEft-minded things feel the air change, and dawnTolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces.How often in the autumn of the worldShall the crystal shrine of dawning be rebuiltWith deeper meaning! Shall the poet then,Wrapped in his mantle on the height of land,Brood on the welter of the lives of menAnd dream of his ideal hope and promiseIn the blush sunrise? Shall he base his flightUpon a more compelling law than LoveAs Life's atonement; shall the visionOf noble deed and noble thought immingledSeem as uncouth to him as the pictographScratched on the cave side by the cave-dwellerTo us of the Christ-time? Shall he standWith deeper joy, with more complex emotion,In closer commune with divinity,With the deep fathomed, with the firmament charted,With life as simple as a sheep-boy's song,What lies beyond a romaunt that was readOnce on a morn of storm and laid asideMemorious with strange immortal memories?Or shall he see the sunrise as I see itIn shoals of misty fire the deluge-lightDashes upon and whelms with purer radiance,And feel the lulled earth, older in pulse and motion,Turn the rich lands and inundant oceansTo the flushed color, and hear as now I hearThe thrill of life beat up the planet's marginAnd break in the clear susurrus of deep joyThat echoes and reëchoes in my being?O Life is intuition the measure of knowledgeAnd do I stand with heart entranced and burningAt the zenith of our wisdom when I feelThe long light flow, the long wind pause, the deepInflux of spirit, of which no man may tellThe Secret, golden and inappellable?